TELL US PAM, HOW DOES YOUR GAR­DEN GROW?

Par­tial to “a bit of ev­ery­thing” from her gar­den, the 75-year-old is mod­est about what makes her gar­den grow.

She said cow ma­nure, and per­haps a bit too much, some fer­tiliser and keep­ing the weeds out, were the key.

Asked what feed­back she’d re­ceived from judges about her award-win­ning collection of veg­eta­bles, she replied: “Half the time, there’s not many oth­ers against me, so I win prob­a­bly”.

Pam Boughen Half the time, there’s not many oth­ers against me, so I win prob­a­bly.

Af­ter a pause, she added it was a bit early for veg­eta­bles at this time of the year.

Liv­ing off home pro­duce was both ne­ces­sity and habit she adopted from her child­hood grow­ing up on a dairy farm.

When their kids were lit­tle, they had a big vege gar­den with pota­toes and pump­kins, and would sell shal­lots and sil­ver­beet to Gayn­dah’s shops.

Mrs Boughen could not re­call when she be­gan en­ter­ing her veg­eta­bles, jams, chut­ney and cook­ing in the show, but had saved some me­men­tos.

The ear­li­est was a news­pa­per clip­ping from 1983 which read: “Cham­pion cake of show was an or­ange bar cake en­tered by Mrs Pam Boughen which was beau­ti­fully pre­sented, had a very fine tex­ture and cut very nicely".

Gen­er­ously, Mrs Boughen shared her recipe for mus­tard pick­les – and has pre­pared a long list of en­tries for this year’s show.